Understanding Cloud Migration

Cloud migration involves transitioning a company's digital assets, IT resources, and applications to the cloud. It may involve shifting from one cloud provider to another. As outdated infrastructures begin to affect business performance, enterprises are now leveraging cloud migration services. While cloud migration offers enhanced real-time performance, ensuring the selected cloud solution aligns with business requirements is pivotal.

Notably, cloud migration isn't just about the move; it's about optimising operations once there. It introduces the concept of application modernisation and raises questions regarding optimal performance in the cloud. Hence, organisations often seek services with strong cloud migration capabilities to assist in this transformation.

Key Advantages of Cloud Migration

Migrating to the cloud offers several benefits:

• Cost-Effectiveness: Cloud migration can significantly lower the total cost of ownership.
• Agility: It provides unmatched flexibility and responsiveness to changing market dynamics.
• Innovation: The cloud offers avenues for rapid innovation.
• Scalability: Accommodating growing customer expectations and demands becomes easier.
• Performance Boost: Overall operational performance sees improvement.

Recently, the shift towards elastic digital workplaces and the rise of remote work have accelerated cloud adoption, compelling businesses to ask, "Why didn't we transition sooner?"

The Cloud Migration Journey

Companies venturing into cloud migration must consider the process holistically. The main steps include:

• Strategising: This involves establishing the business value and goals of the migration. It's essential to decide which applications are apt for the cloud and which might not offer a suitable return on investment.
• Discovery and Assessment: Companies must evaluate their current infrastructure and decide on the most suitable applications for migration. This involves risk assessments, application discovery, and ensuring the maintenance of service level agreements post-migration. Click here for a SaaS agreement template, since it can be beneficial to facilitate the process between both parties.
• Migration Phase: Here, the emphasis is on modernising applications for the cloud, developing new cloud-centric applications, and overhauling the infrastructure. Automated tools combined with specialised skills can make this transition smooth.

Different Cloud Migration Methods

When devising a cloud migration strategy, firms need to factor in the deployment model (public, private, hybrid, multi-cloud) and the service type (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS). The primary cloud migration approaches include:

1. Re-host (lift & shift): Transferring applications from on-site data centres to the cloud, starting with simpler tasks and advancing to complex ones.
2. Re-platform: Adopting an operating system version aligned with CNaaS Platform Standards, aiming to minimise operational costs.
3. Re-factor: Components of applications are revamped to meet enterprise, functional, and security standards.

In essence, cloud migration services are becoming pivotal for businesses to harness the myriad benefits of cloud computing, ensuring smooth operations, agility, and long-term growth.